#but that means little to everyone but me lol nkdfgdfg

[acaciapines]

how abt……. number 42?? 👀

<33333

Doppelgänger – The Antlers

the she who is wings-across-night, who is a hunter of the night and best-of-them-all, awakes as she has for many times now to her feathers pressed against the cold, wet surface of a cave, and she grumbles why-you here no-want better there look up up up up yes? up-YES, and she would shriek annoyed listen-here but time has proven that for as much as they are trapped together trapped-with-her is very bad at listening.

about the caves, at least. she is…

staring at the slumbering form of the companion she is unable to fly away from, wings-across-night considers what you.

trapped-with-her has always been…herself, in the sense that a hatchling who bites always at their nest-parents for food is herself, loud and wanting and squawking despite the loud shrieking stop-that from nest-mates and parents alike. they were hatched at similar times, wings-across-night believes, and here now have fledged together, though oftentimes wings-across-night is not sure she has.

to fledge is to fly freely, to greet hello-you to the moon and the stars, to make a nest of your own, to roost always in the tops of trees. here wings-across-night sleeps on cave ground and chases the birds, the ones that trapped-with-her snarls mine you listen-here stop mine give-it, and that break apart in her beak to the sharp tang of magic, and are not actually birds at all.

here she is not even on her own, for there is trapped-with-her always, biting and tossing her head me strong want-yes, and ignoring wings-across-night’s growled no-want.

but here is, she will admit, better than when they were with the-MOTHER still, and it was trapped-with-her who took the metal bars of trap and twisted them open, and said, with a softness she does not often carry, us-together out-there yes? you want?

wings-across-night stretches her talons before her, and considers this.

perhaps today she will catch them both fish.

trapped-with-her is, after all, an awful hunter.

Commentary

ah yes that part of my playlist where even tho its supposed to be sorted alphabetically by song title it sorts every single the antlers song by band name for some reason.

anyways, names! wings-across-night is firefly/the owl beast, and trapped-with-her is what firefly calls eda. it is not a translation of eda's name though firefly does know that the sounds that make up 'eda' are the same person. she's just being very bitter dfkgdfg later on she will go to translate eda as 'chooses-me' because like. c'mon. 'eda the owl lady' is ASKING FOR IT.

this takes place sometime after eda and firefly run away from home! so, late teens-early twenties here. the eda-firefly relationship is actually really fun for me to write in this early stage...they're very much dependent on each other to stay alive, and DO occasionally have moments of bonding....but mostly to eda firefly is just the stupid curse who killed her palisman, and to firefly eda is the reason she's trapped here, so they growl at each other and only stick together bc, yknow, they die if they dont.

its fun!! its also very funny to me that in this point in time firefly is far more perceptive about their relationship than even eda...it takes eda WAY longer to realize that firefly is often trying to talk to her and even longer before she like, actually puts in the effort to talk back.

firefly is Trying Her Best <3.